Overview
Perpetual Alpha is a live algorithmic trading competition in which teams design, implement, and operate autonomous trading agents on the Hyperliquid testnet, a high-performance decentralized derivatives exchange.
Over a multi-week live trading phase, teams compete under identical starting conditions with testnet (non-monetary) capital. The hackathon runs on live, adversarial market infrastructure. Participants interact with each other and with organizer-operated market-making bots on the same order books. Final rankings combine three components: realized profit and loss, the risk profile of the strategy, and the sophistication of the algorithm as assessed by an expert jury. Top teams will be invited to present their approaches at the ICAIF 2026 Competition Track in Milan.
Important Dates
- Oct 5: Practice tests (non-scored).
- Oct 19: 3, 2, 1 ... GO! Scored Phase
- Nov 6: End of the trading phase
- Nov 9: Report submission
- Nov 14-17: ICAIF 2026 Milan
Areas of Interest
Trading strategies and asset management, AI agents and reinforcement learning, and blockchain/DeFi. You'll trade in a fully live environment with realistic, industry-level market microstructure — a rare opportunity to test strategies against real market dynamics.
Beyond the Leaderboard
You'll be tackling problems the financial industry actually cares about: how well a strategy holds up out-of-sample and out-of-simulation, risk-aware objectives beyond raw return, and responsible evaluation of trading algorithms.
Target Audience
Everyone is welcome — students are especially encouraged to take part. No previous experience with Hyperliquid is needed, as you'll be provided with dedicated material and several weeks to practice with the platform and run demo strategies.
Eligible Teams
Teams must be made up of 1 to 4 members. Should the team be selected as a winner, at least one member must be available to attend ICAIF 2026 in Milan in person to present its work.
